This invention relates to games or tournaments based on sports, television shows or other real world events, and specifically to fantasy games wherein the user/fantasy player selects real-world athletes, actors, topics, industries or event participants and, according to certain rules and point systems, compare the performance of their fantasy teams based on real-life results.
To win a fantasy game, a user will do the best job of predicting future performance and drafting or managing his or her team based on those predictions. Fantasy leagues are known to fans of major sports and other events. Included are fans of professional football, professional basketball, professional hockey, major league baseball, auto racing, television shows such as American Idol, and industries such as movies and fashion. Typically in the prior art, a “draft-style” league is created having a plurality of participating team general managers. The managers gather, either in a physical location or online, at a previously agreed date and time before the start of the corresponding season, show or event, to draft “players” (hereinafter referred to as “athlete/participants”) for their fantasy teams. The rules can vary from fantasy league to fantasy league, but in general, each participating team general manager is permitted to draft a certain number of athlete/participants to create a roster. For example, a typical fantasy football team roster might have two quarterbacks, six running backs, six receivers, two kickers, two defenses and two special teams. As another example, typical American Idol league would involve selecting a roster that would include the top finishers in the American Idol competition from among the Hollywood finalists.
Often, however, such gatherings can be difficult to schedule, as the schedules of eight, ten or twelve users to participate in such a draft can be difficult to coordinate, and it can be difficult to find a suitable time to conduct a draft when all the users who are team general managers are available. In order to combat this scheduling problem, sometimes fantasy leagues have the users create a list of players before the draft so that, if a particular user is not able to attend the draft, at least that user will be able to receive some picks, based on the list that user determined before the draft.
Many such users or team general managers consider the draft the most fun part of fantasy sports, as the most challenging part of the game can be selecting the players to be on the roster. Often, users get discouraged if they are randomly assigned a draft position they consider disadvantageous. Often, such leagues end early because many of the users quit or lose interest, leaving the league with limited competition and ruining the experience for others in the league. The use of a predetermined list, the assignment of an unfavorable draft position, or the loss of users during the game, as described above, can substantially reduce the fun of the game or tournament.
This invention relates to improvements to fantasy leagues to make them more interesting, and to solutions to some of the problems raised or not solved by conventional fantasy leagues.